Tuesday December 7th, 11.15 – 11.55 h, Rotterdam Ahoy
During the European Industry & Energy Summit 2021, TenneT and Croonwolter&dros will demonstrate how they are tackling the major challenges of the energy transition through equal cooperation and open innovation. Industry also benefits from this.
The decarbonisation of the European energy market has a major impact on industry, infrastructure and the companies that play a pivotal role in energy transition. To keep the energy supply reliable, affordable and available, European electricity transmission system operator TenneT is working more closely with technical service providers such as Croonwolter&dros.
The challenge facing the electricity grid operators is immense. On the generation side, the share of wind and solar energy is growing while electricity consumption is increasing enormously as cars, homes and industry all exchange fossil fuels for electricity. This means that a lot of connections and grid reinforcements will have to be made, while many systems are nearing the end of their technical lifespan. Not surprisingly, this will cost the grid operators a lot of money and a lot of manpower will be needed to make the transition. Unfortunately, the technical labour market is under pressure while the public companies must be able to justify their expenditure to the citizens.
When money and manpower are scarce, there is no alternative but to work more efficiently and smarter. TenneT therefore decided to make a radical change by abandoning the traditional principal/operator relationship. If the parties work together as equal partners, projects can be carried out faster and more cheaply. As a certified TenneT contractor, Croonwolter&dros now has many examples of the benefits of the new form of cooperation. An additional advantage of the transparent collaboration is that Croonwolter&dros is also given more scope to introduce innovations. Modular design, for example, saves a lot of time and reduces the risk of errors.
Industry too can benefit from Croonwolter&dros’ knowledge and experience of both medium and high voltage systems. After all, if they wish to replace gas-fired installations with electrical variants, this requires high-quality knowledge which companies often do not have in-house. Croonwolter&dros’ electrical experts can not only adapt the systems and infrastructure within the company gates to the new requirements, but also provide the connection to the high-voltage grid.
On stage: Roland Kroes, Sander Weitkamp (TenneT), Paul Hoorens (Croonwolter&dros), Anoek Sloot (Croonwolter&dros) and Jaap Reijntjes (Croonwolter&dros)
